Thoughts on social media, business and journalism from Suw and Kevin Charman-Anderson

FOWA 07: Stefan Fountain – The Future of Contact Management

If your Mum changes her phone number and emails you a .vcf file, you have to add it to your address book, connect your phone to Bluetooth… but you have to pair it first, so end up using a cable… and then fire up iSync to get your contacts on your phone.

That’s how it is today.

But everyone has different devices, and each device has its own address book, so we end up with contact pools. It’s difficult to sync. If someone changes their number, you have to input it several times, which is made worse because the interface is awful. Input methods, like T9, can get in the way for names.

Soocial.com creates one contact pool, and distribute them to devices when you need it.

So, your Mum changes her number, you double click, it’s automatically distributed to all your devices. It doesn’t spam your friends asking them to update their contacts. If you update your number, it automatically updates on everyone else’s address books.

Desktop apps like Address Book, Office, and MS Outlook will have a plug-in. Developing an open API, because it needs to work in your apps. There will also be a web app to help you manage your contact information.